Smoked Chicken Wings

The Canadian Foot League (CFL) recently had the big game - the Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders (Go Riders) vs. Montreal Allouettes. Although I'm not a football fan, I'm a bandwagon fan, so this was the perfect opportunity to put together some football party fare.

The star of the show: chicken wings.

But not any chicken wings. Smoked chicken wings.

Now there are many schools of thought on the chicken wing. From super hot, tears in your eyes, blowing your nose, taste not the issue wings to sticky and sweet wings with a multitude of options in between. Of course, if you want to go into sauces (blue cheese dip?) and accompaniments (carrot and celery sticks) just adds to the list and dimension of chicken wings.

For the "Game" my husband requested hot wings - specifically, Louisiana hot sauce wings. So the challenge was on (beyond the Grey Cup).

I have made wings on the smoker before, but not of the hot wing variety. I figured I'd apply some of the same principles from previous. I also didn't want the super hot for the sake of hot wings, but hot with some taste wings. Here's how it went down.

I figured I would want the wings to smoke awhile without any sauce - as any chile based or tomato sauce will char and make a bitter flavour. So I brought in a trusty sweet spice rub for the initial job.

Once the wings were close to being cooked, I added sauce. To get flavour and not just heat, I determined to combine the Louisiana hot sauce (1 part) with some French dressing (2 parts). The dressing would add flavour, but temper the full-on heat.

The end result was terrific. Fall off the bone wings, with good flavour, but good heat. Mmmm. Would I change anything? Next time I would try doing the sauce as a baste instead of a pan sauce, to ensure extra crispiness of the wings (but that’s just personal preference).